Non Dairy Food and Recipes

I dont have any recipes but I do suggest this stuff called "Better than Cream Cheese" It really is better and there's no lactose. Also, you can use any recipe out there pretty much and just substitute soymilk for milk.

My kids did better with soymilk than cows milk, so we don't even have any cows milk in the house. Just substitute soymilk in any recipes. It works just fine, but not to make instant pudding (weird, huh) but I have never had anyone notice the difference between soy and cows milk in anything that I have made. The non-dairy ice creams they have available are also not too bad!

You can alter just about any recipie to make it dairy free. I used to have a boss that was a total vegan, so any time I would make treats to take to work I kept her in mind, which obviously meant no dairy.

First of all, so far as butter is concerned, Smart Balance is vegan, so obviously it has no dairy in it. Also, yogurt and cheese have very little lactose, so depending on the level of her intolerance she may be fine eatting them. In most recipies, depending on what it is, you can substitute plain soy milk or chicken broth. Even cake, although the results will not quite be the same. But my sisters (not lactose intolerant, they just don't buy milk because they don't like it) use soy milk in all their recipies- cake, mac and cheese, etc. And they say it turns out just fine.

One last thing. Everyone will tell you "make sure she gets enough calcium." As long as she is drinking the soy milk and she eats vegetables, calcium is not as big a concern as fat intake. Most kids don't eat much meat, so they get much of the fat and cholesterol they need from milk. Try to make sure she gets enough healthy fats and cholesterol from other sources.

Be careful with Mac & Cheese from a box as the cheese powder does contain dairy. We use Almond Milk instead of Cow's milk or Soy Milk. There is some talk about how Soy can adversely affect our children's hormones when they hit puberty and beyond, and can even lead to health issues related to hormones problems in girls, and prostate health in boys. So we now steer clear of most soy products. Almond milk is great, and Rice milk we use occasionally.

We replace regular cheese with Rice Dream Cheese. There is also non dairy Ice Cream available as well. The kids love them!!! My son actually tasted cows milk this year after being on alternative milks for the last 5 years and did not like the taste at all. It takes some time to adjust but once they are used to the changes they will do fine.

I agree that Smart Balance is wonderful as a butter sub. My kids are not lactose intolerant, they actually have an allergy to animal fat. We do offer them dairy once per week then simply follow with a home made fruit smoothie with flax seeds/oil in it. It helps them pass the dairy without their normal complications. You can hide a world of things in homemade fresh fruit smoothies and sorbet. We use a Vita Mix for making them.

Good luck!

Other responses to your request cover the basics on substitutes. Watch out for transfats in Tofutti products! As for recipes that do not use dairy, I found a great website - www.veganlunchbox.com/recipes.html
and a few cookbooks, "Vegan with a Vengeance: Over 150 Delicious, Cheap, Animal-Free Recipies That Rock" and "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World: 75 Dairy-Free Recipes for Cupcakes that Rule" both by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. The chocolate cupcakes are really great. Enjoy!

Hello,

I would recommend the book called Fit for Life (Harvey and Marilyn Diamond) which has a ton of good recipes in the last half of the book.

M.

Renee,
I have three children with lactose intollerance.The funny thing is that I am Italian. We put cheese on everything. Took is a while to figure out what was wrong, but thats another story. Don't fear, there are plenty of good products on the market now days. If your daughter can tollerate lactose free milk thats a plus. My two daughters can drink the lactose free milk and prefer the Organic Valley brand, the Safeway brand is not very good as it clumps. Organic Valley taste really good. My son can not drink l.c.free milk so he uses Almond milk and Soy milk. Silk (soy) milk is pretty good, the Almond milk is great. There are several brands of cheese out there if your kids are wild about cheese. Keeping the calcium up here is the challenge. We ate a lot of broccoli, and anything else that is high in calcium. This will be really important for your 5 year old, she is still building those important bones. We also found several vegitarian cookbooks to use which works nicely. Vegitarians use a lot of beans and legumes, which are really easy and quick to cook. Just watch the fat content. I used a little too much fat in the legumes at first. Anyway, I hope that helps you some. Once you get the hang of it it is really easy. As the kids get older they handle it really well. Good luck! G. K

The nice thing about soy milk is it works great in almost every recipe as a sub for regular milk. If you are making something like muffins, use the vanilla soy for a little extra flavor. Look for store brand products like biscuits and chocolate chips - they tend to be dairy free. And believe it or not, pizza without cheese is actually not too bad, just make sure you order it with extra sauce on the side. Good luck!

Hi Renee:

Please be careful with soy milk, a lot of kids may have allergies to soy, just like milk and wheat. Try rice milk, they sell it at Trader Joe's.

My son just had an allergy scratch test a few days ago. He is allergic to eggs, but not any other dairy products that we know of. The allergist gave me a newsletter recommended the website on the newsletter. ____@____.com might find some information there. I know there are food replacements for eggs (say you want to make meatloaf, you use 1 tablespoon pureed apricots instead of the egg, or you can use 2 packets plain gelatin and 2 tablespoons of water for. These two ideas are for "binding" foods together) There are ways around it. Can he have soy milk? If you need to replace an egg in a recipe, you can make your own replacement.

1 teaspoon of baking powder plus 1 tablespoon of liquid plus 1 tablespoon of vinegar.
OR
1 teaspoon of yeast dissolved 1/4 cup of warm water
OR
1 1/2 tablespoons of water plus 1 1/2 tablespoons of oil plus 1 teaspoon of baking powder.
OR
You can buy an egg replacement called Jolly Joan (Ener-G Foods). Not all egg substitutes are egg-free, so read the labels carefully.

http://www.ener-g.com/store/detail.aspx?section=8&cat...
This link will take you to the Ener-G Foods website where they have an egg free egg replacement you can buy. There are milk replacements too. Maybe if you call them, they can send you out some information.

Savory Sauce

I use this for my kids instead of Alfredo Sauce (I just tell them it is cheese sauce and they love it.) You can also use on steamed vegetables, as salad dressing, on baked potato, on Mexican food or on pasta.

Can be frozen for future use.

Put all ingredients into a blender:

3/4-cup safflower oil or almond oil
3/4-cup water
1/4-cup Bragg Liquid Aminos
1/8-cup brewer’s yeast flakes
1/4-tsp. Kelp powder
1/4-tsp Spike Seasoning
1/4-tsp basil
1/8-tsp granulated garlic
1 1/2-tsp lemon juice
1 1/2-tsp Tamari sauce (low sodium soy sauce)
1 package tofu, rinsed well (16 oz.)

Blend until smooth and creamy.
(all of the ingredients can be found at Whole Foods)

Hi Renee,

I am allergic to dairy and have been finding substitutes for dairy for years. Whole Foods has a good selection of items that are dairy free. They have items in the bakery that list if it's dairy free, like cakes, cookies and muffins. You can ask someone at the store if there is a list of items they carry. I'm thinking they have one, although it may just be Gluten Free products that they have the list for. When you read labels for ingredients, whey or casein means it has dairy. I avoid those, but your daughter may not need to, being lactose intolerant. I'm not sure. Soy Delicious is a good brand of ice cream. I drink the Trader Joes brand of Vanilla Rice Milk. I wouldn't give her too much soy because it can mess with the hormones in young kids. Soy is a big ingredient in a lot of the dairy free products. Trader Joes may have a list of dairy free products as well. Tofutti has a brand of DF cream cheese that is yummy. It's hard to find a cheese substitute that is dairy free because even the veggie/ tofu ones have casein in it. Luna granola bars are DF and yummy. My kids like the S'mores and Peanut butter cookie flavors. There is a good butter substitute called Earth Balance Natural Buttery Spread. It tastes good, is 100% Vegan and they have it at Trader Joes and Whole Foods. Vegan products have no dairy, so that's a good thing to look for. TJ (Trader Joes) has frozen waffles that are dairy free. I think they have pancakes there too now. Here are two books that I use: The Allergy Self-help Cookbook by Marjorie Hurt Jones and Food Allergies Made Simple by Phylis Austin, Agatha Thrash M.D. There are lots of websites too. Here is one that has foods listed by what you are allergic to. http://www.allergygrocery.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Scre...

Here's another site: http://www.foodb.com/

I use www.allrecipes.com a lot because you can search by ingredient and look for recipes without dairy ingredients.
I usually just substitute the dairy ingredients in recipes with the DF versions. Milk = rice or soy milk, butter = buttery spread, DF chocolate chips from TJ, etc.

Good luck to you. I hope this info. helps. You can e-mail me if you have other questions. It's hard to remember all the products that I have found over the years. I'm happy to share the info that I have learned over the years about food allergies. I have other allergies/food intolerances besides dairy, so I know about many products out there.
Sincerely,
Heather Cherry
____@____.com

Dear Renee,

I am so glad that she drinks the silk soy milk. I drink the Lactose Free milk and use it in recipes that call for milk. Also, the Jessica (I think that it is Jessica, maybe Jennifer) Seinfeld has a website and she uses a lot of vegetable and fruit purees to cook with, and then uses water for the rest of the necessary liquid.

I made a chocolate cake with pumpkin puree and water, it was very nice and moist . She has a recipe for chocolate pudding too, no milk. She was on Oprah's show about a month ago, it all seems very easy and I am in the process of getting a steamer and blender so that I can do it for my husband and I . We are older, but we can use the extra nutritional value in the purees.

C. N.

Hi Renee

My now 5 year old daughter was lactose intolerant when she was younger. She, fortunately, grew out of it. I found some lactase tablets that were chewable and had zero flavour and just gave her one of those before eating anything with cow milk in it.

I think I got them from costco. I found this the simplest way to help my daughter get the needed calcium, feel normal and still enjoy food. Lactose intolerance is where the body doesn't make enough lactase. So, you can just supply her body with it and she will be fine.

I do know that there is a 12 hour tablet out there for kids. This one means you can give it to your daughter before she goes to school and she can eat whatever she wants at school and not have to worry. This one is in most pharmacy aisles, I think it is lactase ultra.

Good luck.

She's a lucky girl because her body is letting her know what's good for her. Breastmilk is for people, cow's milk is best for cows. It's only touted as good because we have an aggressive dairy industry.

Since too much soy has been recognized as possibly being problematic, may I suggest you also use almond milk or rice milk. You can use any of these to replace milk in any recipe. Soy seems to work best in recipes like mashed potatoes.

It was my stepdaughter who, at 11, after reading about the dairy industry, veal, and more, insisted that she would no longer use milk products. That was more than 15 years ago, and she's stayed good to her word. We all began using alternative products, and I must say, it does feel great not to be on the consumer end of a product that is not healthy for humans or cows!

Costco has tons of soy stuff, butter, milk, cheese you name it! Good luck

There are frozen pizza's without dairy, I think maybe even Annie's mac and cheese. There is also rice milk that tastes great that I believe has added calcium. There are soy yogurts available too.